Ecological Rationality

ABSTRACT—Traditional views of rationality posit general-purpose decision mechanisms based on logic or optimiza-tion. The study of ecological rationality focuses on un-covering the ‘‘adaptive toolbox’ ’ of domain-specific simple heuristics that real, computationally bounded minds em-ploy, and explaining how these heuristics produce accurate decisions by exploiting the structures of information in the environments in which they are applied. Knowing when and how people use particular heuristics can facilitate the shaping of environments to engender better decisions. KEYWORDS—ecologicalrationality;decisionmaking;adap-tive toolbox; simple heuristics; environment structure; bounded rationality The importance of looking at the world to understand the mind has long been appreciated by a few prominent thinkers. Charle